The Trump administration has sworn in the largest class of immigration judges in U.S. history to accelerate deportation proceedings, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday.
A total of 77 permanent immigration judges and five temporary judges took the oath on Wednesday. The historic onboarding is part of a broader effort by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that has seen 153 permanent judges appointed this fiscal year—marking another agency record for a single fiscal year.
The hiring surge aims to address a massive backlog of pending cases. According to the DOJ, the backlog of asylum-related immigration cases reached 2.5 million in fiscal year 2023 and peaked at 4 million by January 2025. Following the implementation of strategies that included placing military lawyers in immigration courts, the DOJ reports that the current caseload has dropped to just under 3.53 million.
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“Today, we are onboarding the largest immigration judge class in agency history,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “This could only happen thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership and commitment to securing our borders. I also applaud EOIR’s leadership team for helping facilitate these hiring efforts and recruiting highly qualified and talented personnel in record time.”
Immigration judges hold the authority to decide deportation cases, making them the primary bottleneck or accelerator for the administration’s border enforcement goals.
In its official announcement, the DOJ emphasized the focus on the current caseload, stating, “Reducing the immigration court backlog remains one of the highest priorities for the [EOIR].”
Data show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is on track to deport more than 85,000 individuals through formal judicial deportation orders by the end of fiscal year 2026. Those judicial orders represent one component of the more than 675,000 total removals credited to the administration, a figure that also encompasses immediate turnarounds at the U.S. border and voluntary self-deportations.
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